


If wishes were horses

by Melody hitachiin (Lolabug7)



Category: Original Story
Genre: F/M, Kinda marvel but not, Original Story - Freeform, Short Story, WWll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 00:00:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11196219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lolabug7/pseuds/Melody%20hitachiin
Summary: A young woman sneaking off to defend her country and finding herself becoming the captain of a small troop of men.This is an original story and has small ties with marvel such as names and small plot elements. This is only here because I don't want to lose it but have fun reading it?





	If wishes were horses

Maria Brown 1918-2014

War ruins everything especially if your a woman in a mans war. It takes family, friends, loved ones and gives nothing in return. I remember a time where life was simple and easy before I got thrown into the war head first. I had expected to die quickly and not live to see the years to come but fate had other plans for me.

I was nearly twenty-six when my father was drafted, I remember watching my mother collapse into his arms with grief. At some point after they fell asleep, I'd made up my mind to take my fathers place in the war. The men much too desperate for soldiers to question my feminine frame. They thrust me into combat training and shipped me off within a few weeks and luckily, my father hadn't caught up with me yet.

The war it's self is blurry, I remember being in a small squad of men, no more then ten including myself. They were all crazy and rowdy men with the exception of Sargent Joseph Rodgers. He quickly became my closest friend out of all the men, and it hadn't taken him long to wake up in the night as he brushed against my chest to realize my secret. Out of everything I had been through, Joseph Rodgers I remember well. He was tall and broad and easily intimidating if not for his soft eye and kind smile. his wife back in Brooklyn by the name of Sarah was a truly lucky woman, If he ever made it through the war that is. 

We fought long and hard taking little time to heal unless necessary. We were well respected by everyone where ever we went. It was some time in 44 when I had almost been caught by men in the showers at base and well after that I waited till I was near a lake or during the late hours of the night when everyone was asleep. 

In the later months of 45 me and my men had been through thick and thin and created a bond to last a life time, I had even been brought up to captain of my small troop after captain Richards had been MIA. Joseph had insisted that we throw a small party and so Joseph, Cromwell, Anderson, Jones, Dugan and I all made quite a dent in the liquor in the nearest bar to base. After what seemed like hours of drunken stupors from the group, we made our way back to the base. just making it to their bunks before they collapsed, Myself following soon after. 

The night was rather blurry but I had gotten up to use the bathroom some time in the night and found myself stumbling upon a group of soldiers that had been causing trouble since they had been drafted. Some how during my trip past their tent and to the bathrooms I had run into them and they had somehow discovered I was a woman since I always used the stalls to pee (obviously). As soon as I stepped out the leader of their shenanigans, a young soldier by the name of Williams had managed to grab a fist full of my hair and pull me to the ground. I was still intoxicated and couldn't fight as well as him at the moment so I hit the floor unable to dodge the kick one of the men landed to my ribs. They laughed asking my why I was fighting in the war instead of being a nurse or working in the factories. I was to focused on trying to fight them off as they dragged my to the middle of the camp to deflect their questions. They threw me down in the middle of the open area by the tents where a few men still awake sat on duty. They announced that I was a woman which at first made the other men laugh till Joseph came running into the group of men pushing them around and yelling at them for disrespecting me. It had confirmed the men's words but non dared to speak about it in the morning as one of the soldiers was found beaten to an Inch of his life and left in front of the infirmary. 

Almost a week after the accident the young soldier Joseph brutally beat got out of the infirmary and went straight to the Colonel about me being not only a woman, but overpowering my rank as captain. Not long after I had been called to the Colonels office and asked about the accusations. I denied them but in the end I was sent to medical to be confirmed that I was In fact a woman.   
The Colonel was a good man when he chose to be and when I was asked back to his tent he and Joseph both sat waiting for me. 

I was sworn to secrecy along with Joseph and was allowed to keep my title as Captain James Bennett, since I was a great captain to my men and a good soldier. Under the conditions that I was never allowed to tell anyone and that I was to be under the supervision of Joseph, I was to continue my service as I had before. I thanked the man profusely and smiled making my way past the men who had beaten me not long ago. 

Finally when the war ended my men and I all went our separate ways back to our family's promising to write each other. The Colonel, somewhat as a joke gave me an improvised version of my suit with a better fit and a skirt. I had excepted them switching to the skirt and blouse and spent my last day on the base before shipping out back home in it. My men wolf whistled laughing about the dropped jaws of the other troops. They all of course had figured it out after spending more then two years together and respected me no less and to which I am grateful for. I spent the night partying till the peak hours of dawn with the boys giving goodbyes as they left ready to be shipped out back to their family's. 

Joseph and I both being from Brooklyn found ourselves departing at the docks, him to his wife and I to my father who stood alone with a frown on his face. He had slapped my right in front of the other people before he went off about how my mother had passed after she had seen me in a newspaper, too shocked and disappointed to live with herself. Joseph who had seen his actions left his wife coming to my aid telling my father about how I should be praised but this only edged my father further slapping me once again and forbidding me from returning home. Joseph, being the man he was had hugged me as I cried And leading me towards where he had left his wife. That's how Joseph and his wife Sarah invited me to live with them till I could get a stable place to stay, or become stable myself. 

The war had left me with night terrors and panic attacks throughout the weeks. Shell shock, or combat stress reaction as the doctors called it, is what I was diagnosed with a month after my return from the war. I always felt like such a burden to Joseph and Sarah, taking their time and space with nothing to give in return. I had thought about just leaving them to find an apartment but I had little money and even more little of a chance at getting a job with my conditions. 

I'd help Sarah with the house and about anything else she'd let me do to pay for my burden of living.   
She'd always decline but as she began to get sick from her shifts at the hospital I slowly took over the house duties. It wasn't until I had received the call that she had collapsed at work that she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She had kept it from Joseph and I for months knowing it would break us both.

She died not long after October of 48 leaving Joseph with only me to care for him. Though I fail to do just that because not even three days after her funeral he disappeared while I was out working what used to be Sarah's shifts. The only thing left out of place being his dog tags that were laid out on the dinner table with a note that simply said ' it's all yours now.'  
He never returned, and nothing made me think he ever would. 

I still live in the same apartment building to this day. I had managed to get over my CSR and start a life with a gentleman by the name of James (ironically). We have two beautiful children, Rebecca and Joseph Brown and were happily married till the day he passed in 09.

A wise man once said, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride.   
Well in my point of view, if wishes were horses then I would be dead, because war ruins everything especially if your a woman in a mans world. It takes family, friends, loved ones and gives nothing in return. No matter where you've been or when you lived your life, war has always lurked in the shadows, following you in your life. It kills, it mains, is destroys and it fixes nothing in its wake but the chaos it ensures. Yet there is always that shadow, looming over us. Waiting to take its next victims, we never learn and we never will for the chaos we create is our own.


End file.
